4 - The Fraught Nature of Afro-Asian Media Solidarities:Restructuring the Ghana Film Unit in the Media Ecologies of a Privatized Future

The restructuring of the Ghana Film Unit as a television station known as TV3 Ghana was organized by means of a fifteen-year leasing agreement between the heads of state of Ghana and Malaysia in 1983. The Malaysian media enterprise Sistem Televisyen Malaysia Berhad, now known as Media Prima, was charged with transforming the nearly defunct film unit into an independent television station that has since become one of the most popular television stations in Ghana. The arrangement between Prime Minister Jerry Rawlings in Ghana, and Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad in Malaysia, was patterned on a leasing agreement that included a number of other state assets primed for restructuring as a means of privatizing state assets. The Ghana Film Unit was one of the most accomplished film units of the postwar era just prior to independence. However, it was the transformation of the film unit into a business enterprise that created the basis for an emergent digital media infrastructure and investment opportunities in time to come. Transforming a public enterprise into a privately owned one serves as a basis for examining how political power functions in the name of postcolonial aesthetics. This presentation seeks to provide a basis for considering how this case of asset restructuring associated with film and media once considered a public good came to be understood through the terms of market share in the name of postcolonial solidarities.